Red-Tentacled Thing

In his lab, Professor Jason Arnold shows his prized pupil, Tom Graves, an experiment for prolonging life. Professor Arnold injects a serum into lab animals, but the animals fade and disappear. Overly excited, Arnold accidentally stabs himself with the needle and fades away. In the heat of the moment and to help Arnold, Graves also injects himself. He hurtles through a swirling “rainbow of color” and finds himself in an unfamiliar world. He is attacked by a strange, Red-Tentacled Thing, falling into the “stream of color” running across the planet. There, he reunites with Professor Arnold, who informs Graves they are “obviously stranded in the fourth dimension”. The color-stream, Arnold says, must be the “stream of time”. Graves “plunged out of the time-stream” but instantly faces the Thing. The professor comes to the aid of Graves. He’s struck by the Red-Tentacled Thing while trying to retrieve tablets from the pocket of his lab coat. Arnold instantly turns older, dropping the tablets. Graves examines the professor, finding him dead, and realizes the tablets are the means by which he can escape. Graves can’t escape the Red-Tentacled Thing, knowing its touch speeds up the passage of time, but a Blue-Tentacled Thing appears to battle with the Red-Tentacled Thing and protect Graves. Taking the antidote tablet, Graves fades away, but not before the Blue-Tentacled Thing caresses his cheek, making it numb. When he returns to the lab, which shows signs of long-neglect, he sees a beautiful blonde woman. Somehow, she’s the Blue-Tentacled Thing. She says she saved his life, so now it belongs to her. She wants to take Graves back to the other world where they can live together forever. Graves can’t stand the idea of returning to that world. A pair of men walk in with flashlights. The woman fades, saying she cannot stay. The men recognize Graves, telling him eight years had passed since he and Arnold disappeared. Graves, flabbergasted, looks at his face in the mirror, seeing it aged where the Thing touched him. He knows a beautiful woman is waiting for him in another dimension.